


Room with a View

by wildtrak



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Episode Tag, Injury, Introspection, M/M, Season 10 episode 7, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26659102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildtrak/pseuds/wildtrak
Summary: It should get easier, Danny thinks. After all they’ve been through, it should be just another day, another trauma ruthlessly suppressed and compartmentalised. It isn’t that simple though, and both of them are short on compartment space.Danny arrives at a Washington hotel, unsure of what he'll find.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 20
Kudos: 158





	Room with a View

It’s hardly the Four Seasons, but the room is clean, and after the flight Danny’s had he’s just keen to be horizontal for a few hours. Steve shuts the bathroom door on the negotiation about the bed, but Danny isn’t above staging a non-violent lie-in until Steve relents. The sound of old pipes groaning under what is probably pretty crappy water pressure comes through the wall behind his head, and Danny lets the drone lull him into a zone out for a minute. 

His beer is perspiring in the warmth of the room, despite the fact that Washington’s weather isn’t much nicer than Newark at this time of year. Danny lets his mind drift. Hotel rooms always remind him of loss, and the bleak light from outside the window is a world away from the soft glow of Hawaii. He wonders when it all started to look so grey and lifeless anyplace else. 

It’s a room with a view, at least. 

It’s been a long two months since Steve disappeared in Mexico. He told himself he wasn’t worried, and that Steve would be back cluttering up HQ in no time. But that line became a hard one to sing when the weeks stretched into months. 

He’s seen Steve in a thousand awful situations, in varying states of health which can be pretty reliably indicated by the varying volumes of facial hair. While Steve’s current appearance doesn’t shock him, he hasn’t seen his partner look this rough in a while.

It should get easier, Danny thinks. After all they’ve been through, it should be just another day, another trauma ruthlessly suppressed and compartmentalised. It isn’t that simple though, and both of them are short on compartment space. 

Danny is angry, mostly. Angry at Doris for putting Steve in the position she did, and for the lifetime of grief and distress she’s caused his partner, all predicated on the same bullshit notions she’s been relying on for decades. 

She used to accuse Danny of trying to domesticate Steve, stopping him from achieving his full potential as a ruthless psychopath, or whatever the hell passed for success in Doris’s book. It had been enough to do Danny’s head in, let alone Steve’s. 

She had wanted it both ways, and Danny was forced to stand by and watch as Steve turned himself inside out trying to be the son she expected. Danny had seen the resignation settle over Steve like a weighted blanket when he was handed that dossier in a carpark two months ago, and he knew nothing he said or did would convince Steve to leave Doris well enough alone. 

The whole trust fund thing is too little too late, as far as he is concerned. She may be dead, but Danny’s pretty sure her influence is still alive and well. 

There’s a pained sigh from the bathroom, and Steve pokes his head out the door. 

“Danny?” 

“Yeah babe, I’ll be right there.” 

Danny sets his beer back on the coffee table and stands, ignoring the clicking in his knees and the twinge in his back after ten hours squashed into a coach seat. He pulls off his over-shirt and drops it on the bed, and kicks off his boots and socks before stepping into the bathroom. 

Steve is a Jackson Pollock of bruises and lacerations, but that’s nothing new. His shirt is caught up and his arm hangs awkwardly half out of the sling. Danny waves away the burst of steam that hits him and moves to release the straps of the sling from where they’ve gotten caught. 

“This is actually pretty impressive,” Danny says as he ducks under Steve’s other arm.

“Yeah, well it fucking hurts.” 

“I meant it’s impressive that you managed to find a hotel with actual hot water.” 

Steve does huff out an irritated laugh at that. Danny reaches for the hem of his shirt and draws it up carefully over the edges of bandage adhesive on Steve’s shoulders. The garments are close fitting so it’s a delicate operation, but Danny goes slow and Steve only winces once when Danny eases his injured arm out of the sleeves. 

Fortunately the steam has fogged the mirror so Steve can’t see the face Danny makes when he folds the shirt the rest of the way off and takes in the mess across Steve’s back. It’s mostly covered by neat white squares of waterproof dressing, but there is a lot of mottled bruising, some of which is much older than the last twenty-four hours.

“How you doin’?”—Danny steps back just as Steve lists forward and catches himself on the counter with his good hand before Danny can steady him—“Whoa, easy there!” 

“Thanks, but I can take it from here.” 

“Uh huh, sure. Exactly how much beer have you had with your vicodin before I got here?” 

Steve gives him a baleful look.

“Yeah that’s what I thought.” 

Steve sighs obnoxiously, and makes a ‘have at it’ gesture towards the rest of his clothes. Danny manages to get the cargo pants off without Steve losing his balance and braining himself, and Steve is polite enough not to knee Danny in the face. 

The shower cubicle is on the modest side, but Danny manages to get Steve propped up against the wall under the spray. While he’s keen to shower away the hours of travel himself, Steve is a hulking behemoth in the cramped space and there is really not enough room for two. Instead, Danny reclines in the tiled gap between the sink and the shower glass and waits. 

Steve’s movements are sluggish, but he manages to wash his own hair without Danny’s assistance. 

Danny feels strange all of a sudden, sitting there in the cloying cocoon of the bathroom. The months of worry and stress haven’t exactly been a picnic—whenever his thoughts would turn to Steve he could imagine any number of horrific scenarios. He knows that his own personal brand of catastrophizing is what keeps him awake at night, lest he travel those roads not taken in his dreams. But Steve looks almost unreal in the harsh fluorescent light. 

The Steve that greeted him at the door was something right out of one the screaming nightmares. A hollowed out, wrung out and exhausted facsimile of himself. 

It makes Danny uneasy in a way he can’t quite explain. Like he’s watching Steve’s soul being chipped away, piece by piece. 

“Don’t furrow your brow on my account,” Steve says, voice low. Danny schools his face into a less wrinkled expression and glares blandly at Steve’s turned back. 

“You’re not even looking at me, so how would you know if I’m frowning.”

“Some things never change. Like you, frowning at me because you’re worried.” 

“This is just my face Steven. It’s how it looks after ten years of being your partner.”

Steve just gives him a sad look and ducks his head back under the spray. 

“What, no five-minute Navy shower? You’re slipping babe,” Danny says, trying and failing to segue naturally into a safer topic of conversation. Steve takes pity on him though, and musters up enough genuine disgruntlement to follow the path of a well-worn argument.

“I wouldn’t have to take five minute showers at home if you didn’t hog all the hot water first,” Steve says, and lobs the complimentary bar of hotel soap over the partition at Danny’s head. His coordination isn’t really up to the task—Danny doesn’t so much as flinch, and lets it land in the sink. 

“If you would have just got that ancient hot water tank replaced with a bigger capacity like I told you, then there’d be no issue in the first place. Ah, ah ah…” Danny cuts him off before he can reply. “I know you have a pathological aversion to replacing things until they’re completely broken, but that thing is a fire hazard.” 

Steve shuts the water off and the groaning pipe noise ends, leaving a heavy silence. 

“S’all yours.” Steve’s words are slightly slurred, but he looks better when he steps out. His face has more color in it, and the rosy warmth from the water has disguised some of the blue and green bruising across his chest. 

Steve is careful to keep his legs under him and reaches past Danny for the towels.

Danny has been entertaining himself by fidgeting with the bag of toiletries Steve has left on the counter, in what he has to admit is a pointless show of respect for Steve’s modesty. While now isn’t the time for entertaining any thoughts of any kind with respect to his partner’s modesty or lack thereof, Danny feels a little dizzy when Steve wraps the towel around his waist and hands the other to Danny to dry his back. 

The visceral longing that hits him is all the worse for the two months of Steve-deprivation that he’s suffered. The gravity of Steve’s body drags him in like a rip-tide and he sways in place, glad of the fogged mirror that allows him to hide this sudden weakness from Steve’s view. He’d tried so hard to be cool, to be okay with Steve’s latest AWOL jaunt. He stayed in Hawaii and respected Steve’s wishes and let him go. He waited patiently like a war-widow, never giving up hope and always being faithful. And it has fucking killed him every second of the day. 

He knows it’s selfish, but right now he doesn’t give a shit. It isn’t that Steve is testing the limits of their relationship, because there is apparently no limit to the crap Danny will put up with just to keep Steve. But he just wants Steve to choose their life as the priority for once. To understand that he is pretty fucking essential to Danny’s continued existence, and god-forbid, his ultimate peace and happiness. 

Danny has seen the future that he wants, has the vision so clear in his mind that he can taste the salt in the ocean and feel the heat of the sun on his skin and hear the clink of beer bottles over the crash of waves. Steve’s hand held gently in his own as they watch the sunset. Too old to give a shit about what people will think. Too happy to notice. 

Danny sighs.

He busies himself with the process of dabbing the bandaged areas dry and maneuvering Steve out the door and towards the bed. Steve manages to pull on some sweats and drag himself into the right general vicinity at the top of the bed, while Danny fetches him some more water for the collection of meds on the side-table. 

He gets Steve propped up on the pillows and comfortable, before heading back to the sanctuary of the bathroom. 

He clears a smear of glass on the mirror, and the face that looks back at him is pale and creased. He’s getting old. They both are. 

Sometimes, a Navy shower is all a man can take. 

Less than five minutes later, Danny eases the bathroom door open and re-enters the room. Steve has turned away, and looks to be asleep already. 

Danny throws on some shorts and a t-shirt and grabs a pillow from the other side of the bed to arrange on the couch. He tries to ignore the shaking in his hands and the sudden chill in the room as he gathers the spare blankets. 

Steve’s voice stops him.

“Danno, get in the bed.” 

“Are you sure, you’re pretty banged up. You don’t need me kneeing you in a bruise in the middle of the night,” Danny says in rush, but Steve just repeats himself, sounding vulnerable and almost afraid. Afraid of what, Danny isn’t sure, but he’s scared too. 

He squares his shoulders and sucks in a breath. “Ok babe, just let me know if you’re not comfortable enough, yeah?”

The bed is warm from Steve’s body heat, and Danny sinks into the soft mattress with a sigh. The bed is only a queen, so there isn’t much room to spare, and Steve’s good arm is a warm line against his side. Danny lets the soft sound of Steve’s breathing lull him towards sleep.

There are warm fingers tangled with his, and Steve tells Danny he loves him. 

He must be dreaming already. 


End file.
